Mod: Underwater Gameplay Improvement Mod

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

while an additional item exists that allows the use of Water only, to also get units on land, but at a higher cost in path level and research.

Not possible with the modding tools we got. Aquatic troops are stuck in the seas.

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

I happen to like that aspect of the game. I'm in favor of maintaining it, since it keeps the oceans mysterious and threatening to land-dwellers, since on land you never really see what's going on down there, while at the same time making aquatic Nations entirely different from land or amphibious Nations.

Actually, that's the very thing I'm trying to fix - land and sea is just way too much apart. Why? Think of it this way. The UW nations aren't really playing the game, instead they are stuck into this "mini-game" of UW dominance. It doesn't really matter how this "mini-game" plays out, since the winning player is 95% of the time, decided on land.

Land players can enter the mini-game, but it's really really difficult and usually really not worth the bother. The players in the mini-game can try to get to the real game on land, but none of the sea nations can really compare or manage any kind land dominance, they are just too handicapped. (the exception of MA/LA R'lyeh, though)

Besides, all the fun of the MP comes from interacting with players. What's the point of making it nigh-impossible to interact with some players?

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

When a powerful unit from the sea manages to climb onto the shore, and starts wreaking havoc, it's an extraordinary event. I don't mind if it happens more often than it currently does--and I don't mind if it should happen more often--but I don't want the status quo to be entirely shattered.

That's a good thematic standpoint, but this is a gameplay improvement mod. I want to keep things as close to vanilla as possible, but there just has to be some sacrfices.

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

I happen to believe the Devs had a purpose in doing things the way they did them, and even though their understanding of balancing apparently just isn't complete in terms of gameplay, the way they've set things up has created an ambiance in the game that I think is important, even vital.

I'm all for modding the hell out of the game, 9 ways from Sunday, but I still want the spirit of the game as it comes out of the box to be preserved, and I really feel that this is a piece of that, however small.

I admit that KO and JK are really bigger men than I am, and that dom3 is a masterpiece of genius minds. But they are just men, not gods. They can make mistakes. AotF as A1W1 is one of them. I'll explain it more in detail below this post.

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Aquatic Nations, after all, already have their own set of advantages. Making land easy to get to just erodes away at the whole idea of playing an aquatic Nation. With the possible exception of Hinnom, I don't believe there's a single EA Nation that's more powerful than Oceania, except for the fact that they're almost entirely aquatic. They possess the single best Sacred recruitables in the game, pound for pound, along with all their other advantages. Give them the ability to forge endless cheap Amulets of the Fish, without requiring air magic, and I really believe it could break their balance, giving them the potential to turn into another Hinnom.

EA Oceania, another Hinnom? Seriously?

No really, I mean are you really serious? Are you 100% sure that you want to stand behind that statement?

I just want to be sure before I post my intese rant about how EA Oceania sucks major balls. I'd also like you to specify if you are talking about UWGIM version of EA Oceania, or the vanilla one. (trust me, big difference)

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Maybe not as bad, but still unbalanced, and potentially very bad. Imagine self-healing heavily blessed sacred calvalry commanders with magic weapons that can strike at any water or coastal area almost at will, and then retreat to near-complete safety.

You can't bring KotD's to land. There is no way to do that.

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

But maybe I'm wrong. How about some actual arguments against what I'm espousing?

1) Air gems are really rare find underwater. This is bad, because it makes your ability to forge this item base on dumb luck (=very bad gameplay element). I've often had over 12 water provinces with 0 air gem income. Astral is also a rare find, which makes alchemizing air gems really, really painful.
2) EA R'lyeh. The nation just has to have access to that item in order to have any chance in winning the game. Reguring you to spend valuable pretender points in taking air magic and then using even more valuable pretender turns to search air sites and to forge a ****ty items is just absurd. Note that you do all these ridicilious things just to act as any other nation, there is no real subjective benefit to you by doing these things.
3) The air reguirement is non-thematic. The amulet just creates a bubble of water around you. Why would you need air magic to do that?

I have tons of other reasons, but I really don't have the time to list them all.

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

For that matter, you could add an even cheaper (as far as paths and research go) forgeable item-a helmet for instance-that did exactly what the Amulet of the Fish does, that required Earth 1, Air 1, Water 1, and represented a sortof reverse diving helmet. Make it a minor (Const 0) item that costs 5 Earth gems, and it will make Earth gems more interesting for aquatic Nations.

Maybe you could even add an item that requires Nature 2, Water 2. Armour maybe, akin to the Shambler skin. It could compete with the AOTF in the lesser forgeable item category, and cost 5 Nature and 5 Water gems. That would make it an option for Oceania, allowing them a more expensive but easier to reach option to get on land a little earlier, without breaking balance.

Nothing you mention is actaully doable. I can't copy items (so basically, AotF is the only land breathing item, ever) and neither can I make a item that reguires three paths to forge.

Also, if you are really bothered about making AotF cost W1 to forge, you should likely try to argument in the CBM 1.6 thread, since it now does the exact same change (and is leagues above the popularity of this mod).

If you were talking about SP, you are free to alter your own version of the mod to keep the item as it is. As a fellow modder, that shouldn't prove difficult for you.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm not talking about troops, I'm talking about commanders. I realize that troops are beyond our capabilities.

EA R'lyeh is broken, in terms of MP. Changing AOTF will help, a little, but isn't going to fix it.

The air requirement I can explain, thematically, about a dozen different ways. Do you prefer the air pressure theory, the chemical element theory, or the osmosis theory? Suffice to say that water can go stale over time, as the oxygen leaves it. The oxygen content in a given volume of water isn't unlimited, and can fluctuate greatly even in oceans and lakes. Considering that you've got a decent sized being breathing said oxygen, that amulet will quickly become a murder weapon unless something more substantial than a passing breeze is replenishing that oxygen.

Add to that concerns about maintaining the balance between water and air pressure.

EA Oceania only sucks because it's aquatic. There isn't another EA underwater Nation that can compete with it, if confined to the water only. It's crappy because land Nations exist, not out of any real fault of it's own. Whatever the state of the game happens to be in practice, in theory Knights of the Deep should be able to go on land with an AOTF. It doesn't happen, but I'm not satisfied that there's any real reasoning behind that decision. If an Ancient Kraken can do it, there's no good reason a KOTD shouldn't be able to.

As far as it never happening, there's probably a way to mod in a landform that still retains it's aquatic nature, thus allowing them to go on land, while still requiring the AOTF. Since this is a modding thread anyway, I don't see any reason the vanilla game should be the final say on what makes good balancing.

If AOTF is the only possibility, then sadly my argument is moot, and I might as well stop. Not much I can do about arbitrary modding restrictions, especially now that the Devs haven't been heard from in months. Considering such a restriction, then yes, the best thing left to us would be to remove the air requirement. It's certainly far from what I would consider ideal, however.

I know I can mod it in easily enough. The reason I'm debating it on the boards is because I want some discussion and some different viewpoints. CBM is great, but I don't consider it a very good environment for discussion.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

In other words, the AOTF would be lesser (2 Const), but still require A1W1, while the ??? water only item would be greater (4 Const), and require W4.

Do you really feel that 25 water gems per commander is a reasonable cost to spend getting onto land?

Aquatic Nations, after all, already have their own set of advantages. Making land easy to get to just erodes away at the whole idea of playing an aquatic Nation.

This is nonsense. Making the amulet of the fish doesn't make for easy land access for EA R'Lyeh and EA Oceania. It makes land access _possible_. Expecting players to use their pretender to forge a single amulet of the fish every turn for the entire game is single player thinking.

With the possible exception of Hinnom, I don't believe there's a single EA Nation that's more powerful than Oceania, except for the fact that they're almost entirely aquatic. They possess the single best Sacred recruitables in the game, pound for pound, along with all their other advantages. Give them the ability to forge endless cheap Amulets of the Fish, without requiring air magic, and I really believe it could break their balance, giving them the potential to turn into another Hinnom.

You clearly don't even know what the amulet of the fish does. It allows a single commander to go either above or below water. It does nothing for his troops, and EA Oceania's troops are aquatic only. Knights of the deep are aquatic, and are nothing more than a slightly better version of white centaurs, so they will never be a serious threat to land nations. MA Oceania's Trident Knights are already amphibious, so this certainly doesn't change anything there. EA Oceania can already forge amulets of the fish at A1W1, so they aren't affected in any serious way by this change.

Maybe not as bad, but still unbalanced, and potentially very bad. Imagine self-healing heavily blessed sacred calvalry commanders with magic weapons that can strike at any water or coastal area almost at will, and then retreat to near-complete safety.

All magic weapons do is make units better against ethereal troops. The basic magic weapon has _no_ other effect. Triton kings can't self-bless, and have terrible magic paths, so they aren't much more than thugs. Capricorns are already amphibious. Please remember that there are no gem generators in the game unless you happen to agree with the developers idea of proper balance.

What's wrong with keeping the Amulet of the Fish as-is?

As is, EA R'lyeh cannot forge them for its mindlords. Pretender forging is not sufficient for cheap items that need to go on hundreds of your aquatic mages.

Maybe you could even add an item that requires Nature 2, Water 2. Armour maybe, akin to the Shambler skin. It could compete with the AOTF in the lesser forgeable item category, and cost 5 Nature and 5 Water gems. That would make it an option for Oceania, allowing them a more expensive but easier to reach option to get on land a little earlier, without breaking balance.

Triton kings can already get A1. MA Oceania is already amphibious. Have you even bothered to look at the capabiliies of the nations that you claim would be affected by this? Or are you simply scared by the thought of change?

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

Once again, not moddable. In case we still need to boost the levels of UW access, I have some ideas. Note that I'm keeping these in reserve, I'll only implement them if they are really needed.:

1) Give all units that don't breathe poor ambhibian (Bane Lords + many other undead, elementals, Vinemen, and so forth).
2) New easy nature summon, "Kelpmen", who get stronger in UW.
3) A spell that builds a UW fort, but is only castable from land.
4) Turbocharge UW access by making the breathing items uber-easy to forge (I'm talking about making them level 0 and 1 cost for all of them).

Hmm, I didn't know that.
I neither think it's the lack of access into the water that's a problem nor the lack of uw summons (so no to 1, 2, 4). Seriously you don't just start a war because you can but because you want to profit (and you'll certainly wait until you either have good summons, thugs or some powerful magic, I really see noone attacking an uw nation with const-0 gear and nationals and winning, if there is any balance). The problem is simply that after you have won the war (or invested into labs and temples in the course of your conquest) you risk loosing everything to the next best uw sneak attack (oceania?) without PD and castles - easier access actually makes this worse (because if you can tir can also).
So I'd suggest simply making the kelp forest spell reasonably cheap - not cheap and accesible enough to make it spammable, though. It's fine if it's castable uw only, since this requires you to hold a uw province for a couple of turns (instead of stealth take + instafort).

[HoneyBadger]

I don't have any problem with change. I want to know that it's change for the better. Are you afraid of asking questions? I'd rather be wrong than blind, quite frankly.

I am very familiar with what the AOTF does. Making it cheaper won't by itself fix EA Aboleths. The fact that it doesn't affect troops doesn't necessarily solve the problem of giving Nations that are nearly invulnerable at the start of the game, the ability to indiscriminately raid the surface.

Imagine just the possibility of a 10 Dominion Ancient Kraken with say 4 earth, 4 death, and 4 nature, that can raid from any shore, and then escape without any fear of retaliation. You're talking about shifting the dynamic of the whole game, where outlying shore provinces will need to be fortified. I'm not saying it's a wrong decision, but I think it deserves atleast some discussion.

Magic weapons in the early age? Are you at all familiar with the early age of the game? It's a free magical weapon on top of the attacks the unit already gets, on top of self healing, sacredness, and the fact that it's tough calvalry commander.

I was suggesting the nature/water item as an alternative to the amulet of the fish, to let Oceania get on land more easily than they already can--as a choice, for them and for any other Nation that can take advantage of the situation. Not as a replacement for the AOTF. I never said that it was, in any way.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Imagine just the possibility of a 10 Dominion Ancient Kraken with say 4 earth, 4 death, and 4 nature, that can raid from any shore, and then escape without any fear of retaliation.

That wouldn't give it any capabilities that something with boots of flying or stealth doesn't already have.

You're talking about shifting the dynamic of the whole game, where outlying shore provinces will need to be fortified. I'm not saying it's a wrong decision, but I think it deserves atleast some discussion.

If you don't need to fortify land provinces adjacent to water provinces because the underwater nations are so pathetic that they aren't a threat, then that's a serious balance problem.

Magic weapons in the early age? Are you at all familiar with the early age of the game? It's a free magical weapon on top of the attacks the unit already gets, on top of self healing, sacredness, and the fact that it's tough calvalry commander.

Why are you worried about Trident Lords being turned into thugs by EA Oceania? MA Oceania has trident lords, EA does not. Triton kings don't turn into centaurs on land. EA Oceania has no centaur or mounted troops on land. Even then, they are essentially equivalent to centaur hierophants or cataphract commanders, and can't self-bless. You should really be worried about Pangaea, or even Ulm, where black lords are nearly as tough as Trident lords. Triton kings are nothing special in the EA. They have one less misc slot than every land based commander, and the are members of what is arguably the weakest nation in the entire game.

Magic weapons are only better than regular weapons if the opponent is ethereal or mistformed.

[HoneyBadger]

Well, my biggest issue was having more possibilities than just the AOTF. If that's impossible, then there's really not a lot to argue about.

[Illuminated One]

Ah, I think I've found a difference between RoWB and Sea Kings Goblet.
You cannot rout with Sea Kings Goblet (that is if someone carrying it routs he's autokilled) - so always use RoWB for SCs.

[kianduatha]

Would it be at all reasonable to make Asp Turtles commanders out of the box? There's precedent with the Kithaironic Lion summon, it would make Asp Turtles more attractive because you can actually get them out of the water with an Amulet of the Fish(!), and it would definitely give more options semi-late game for Underwater nations. It's not like they would be spammed, either. In that same level of Conj, you get Catoblepases(Catoblepi?), which are for many purposes way better.

[HoneyBadger]

It's an interesting idea, kianduatha, but there already exists the Leviathan in the game, which is an undead amphibious version of the asp turtle. Making the asp turtle a commander would kind of overshadow the Leviathan in the game, I would think?

Aside from that, there are a host of other critters that could be added to the game, to make the later game more interesting, underwater.

Personally, I was very surprised not to see *any* crocodiles in the game. It seems like a giant saltwater croc would make for an excellent lategame summon, and we know they're amphibious. Crocodiles are one of the most important animals ever, in historical mythology, and they really deserve some place in the game.

For that matter, their are whales which don't appear anywhere in the game (Japanese myth gives us the Bake-kujira, according to Wikipedia, "a ghostly whale skeleton that drifts along the coastline", and which was accompanied by a host of strange and ominous birds, fish, and other creatures--sounds like a perfect lategame summon to me, and could maybe even be a commander?), as well as an enormous variety of prehistoric creatures, and plenty of strange beings from mythology as well.

I'm sold on the idea of the AOTF being water only (because we've been given no choice, really), but with units, we know for certain that they can be added, copied, and modified, in nearly infinite variety.

It seems to me that the asp turtle already fulfills a function in the game, rather admirably, and that the fault lies more with an underpopulated lategame ocean, with a lot of spaces left in it to fill, than it does with what we've already been given.